Don Bell: The proposed curfew and alligator hunting

Thursday

Oct 28, 2010 at 1:09 PM

Bill Halback’s October 27th letter is yet another example of the Quiet Lakes organization desperately attempting to deceive the voters into believing that their unfair and discriminatory ordinance is a good thing for the Alachua County citizens. Although members of his group often falsely told voters that the existing state sound regulations “exempts airboats from the Alachua County noise ordinance,” he finally acknowledges that “noise restrictions may apply in certain areas.” However, he fails to point out that one of these “areas” is the entire county of Alachua.

He states that a “2008 FWCC survey revealed that the majority of hunters successfully used other watercraft.” Funny, the 2008 Florida Alligator Hunting Survey Report published at http://myfwc.com/docs/WildlifeHabitats/Alligator_Hunting_Survey_2008.pdf shows that statewide 60 percent of the guided hunts used airboats. Every lake in Florida is different, so an airboat isn’t the ideal vessel for hunting alligators on every Florida lake, but it sure is required to access the hunting areas on some of them, including most areas of Orange Lake.

He wrote: “While hunting this season on Orange, Newnans and Lochloosa Lakes, I observed only 20 percent to 30 percent of the vessels were airboats.” That’s interesting. As he pointed out in his first paragraph, each hunter is only awarded permits for two alligators. Those two permits are always for the same lake. How did he manage to hunt on three different lakes? And which lake did he calculate the statistics of how many boats of each type were being used? The 2008 report referenced above states that on Orange Lake, over 60 percent of the boats used are airboats. What boat census method did Halback use?

He states that it does not have to be dark to hunt alligators and cited that Georgia and Louisiana allow daylight hunting. A quick check of my map confirmed that Alachua County is not in either Georgia or Louisiana. Florida alligator hunting regulations (http://myfwc.com/docs/WildlifeHabitats/Alligator_10_11_rules.pdf) state very specifically that “Alligators may be taken from 1 hour before sunset to 1 hour after sunrise”. That window of time sure does include a lot of darkness. I’m not sure that I understand the part about “Myth: Recreational gator hunters in Alachua County will lose their livelihood.” If they are “recreational” hunters then they obviously don’t earn their livelihood from alligator hunting. However the guides that do earn their living by taking out recreational alligator and frog hunters will lose their livelihood regardless of the level of sound their vessel makes. How fair is it to pass a discriminatory law that will eliminate that piece of the economy, even if it is a small piece?

And finally, he claims that “The ordinance will allow emergency, law enforcement, government and research airboat use.” After reading the Gainesville Sun October 27 letter to the editor pointing out that UF students use airboats to study alligators at night, he must have forgotten that the ordinance as printed very clearly on everyone’s ballot, does not include words allowing research airboat use from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m.

If there are truly valid reasons to vote for this ordinance, then what are they? Why can’t the facts be delivered to the voters instead insulting their intelligence by presenting so many blatantly incorrect statements? Why? Because the fact is that this ordinance would unfairly discriminate against law abiding boaters and the Alachua County taxpayers would be forced to pay for its enforcement. . The citizens of Alachua County are smarter than that. Vote NO for INITIATIVE ORDINANCE 1.Don Bell,Gainesville